Favorite case trimmer

[owen58]

I use the LEE quick trim die for each caliber. The universal cutter attaches to drill. It a quarter inch drive drill attachment with cutter in the end. I do low volume rifle and have just a single stage press. You put the die in the press. Put the shell in the shell holder then run the ram up and then use the drill to cut it to correct length. Each die is set at that calibers neck length. It takes maybe a second or two with the drill and then replace the case and repeat. After that I chamfer and deburr. Usually I don't have to trim until the second firing. Most are usually still in spec enough until after the second reload. If I try to trim after the first I get so very little brass shavings out of 100 rounds. It's not even enough to fool with. I mean virtually nothing! I consider this part of case prep. Now that the Frankfort Arsenal trimmer has come down in price I might try one of those. It has the case trimmer, chamfer, de-burr and primer pocket cleaner all in one station. It used to be 400 and some dollars but they've come down to $200 now. You have to buy a truck for each caliber for the trimmer but they're inexpensive. I like the fact that all the Case prep steps are right there in one place.

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For high volume, this FA is great. Note that the trim function is not really designed for precision. But all of my plinking brass is done with my FA. Precision brass gets the hand crank / micrometer treatment.

 

[GTN]

I agree completely with the Wilson recommendation with a caveat. Wilson's warranty is complete bs. If your Wilson products work as intended, you're in great shape. If their product fails, or just doesn't work, consider them paperweights. Wilson will tell you to go pound sand. It's a very different experience than working on a problem with Hornady or RCBS, for example.

That's not what I've experienced. I only used Wilsons warranty/CS once but they were very helpful and resolved my issue very promptly. It was on a custom sizing die several years back though.

 

[owen58]

That's not what I've experienced. I only used Wilsons warranty/CS once but they were very helpful and resolved my issue very promptly. It was on a custom sizing die several years back though.

My fired brass would not fit into one of their shellholders (a $14 item) for use in their trimmer. I contacted them and explained the situation. They requested and received pictures. After a week of back and forth, they literally told me that all four of my .308Win barrels have loose chambers and are over-expanding the brass. That was complete nonsense of course. Since I use their trimmer for numerous calibers, I had little choice but to simply order another of the exact same shellholder. A couple of days later, the new shellholder arrived from MidwayUSA and it works perfectly. So rather than replace a piece of incorrectly machined steel that probably costs them no more than $5.00 to make, they blamed Ruger, Winchester, DPMS and Howa for incorrectly machining all of my barrels. The new shellholder definitively proved my claim. I own more than 20 of their products, but I won't buy any more of their stuff.